Alice Munro

The first Canadian woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and one of the world’s most insightful and skilled short story writers, Alice Munro worked at the Vancouver Public Library prior to her worldwide literary acclaim.

What a simple pleasure it was, to take up my station, to face people from behind the desk, to be capable and brisk and friendly with those who approached me. To be seen by them as a person who knew the ropes, who had a clear function in the world. To give up my lurking and wandering and dreaming and become the girl in the library.

From Cortes Island

As outlined in a biography by Robert Thacker, within a month of her arrival in Vancouver in 1952 with her new husband, Alice Munro got a job at the Kitsilano branch of the Vancouver Public Library. In B.C., the couple first lived across from Kitsilano Beach in a basement suite of a three-storey building at Arbutus and Cornwall among “high wooden houses crammed with people living tight.” After a brief stint in North Vancouver, the Munros lived for many years in West Vancouver, above Dundarave. The Munro family eventually moved to Victoria in 1963 where they opened one of Canada’s most venerable bookstores, Munro’s Books. In 2005, Alice Munro accepted the 11th George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an Outstanding Literary Career in British Columbia during a ceremony at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library, but most readers in Canada and abroad assume she is an Ontario writer. Alice Munro lived and wrote in Vancouver and Victoria for more than twenty years before her first marriage ended and she moved back to Ontario.

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As outlined in a biography by Robert Thacker, within a month of her arrival in Vancouver in 1952 with her new husband, Alice Munro got a job at the Kitsilano branch of the Vancouver Public Library. In B.C., the couple first lived across from Kitsilano Beach in a basement suite of a three-storey building at Arbutus and Cornwall among “high wooden houses crammed with people living tight.” After a brief stint in North Vancouver, the Munros lived for many years in West Vancouver, above Dundarave. The Munro family eventually moved to Victoria in 1963 where they opened one of Canada’s most venerable bookstores, Munro’s Books. In 2005, Alice Munro accepted the 11th George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an Outstanding Literary Career in British Columbia during a ceremony at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library, but most readers in Canada and abroad assume she is an Ontario writer. Alice Munro lived and wrote in Vancouver and Victoria for more than twenty years before her first marriage ended and she moved back to Ontario.

What a simple pleasure it was, to take up my station, to face people from behind the desk, to be capable and brisk and friendly with those who approached me. To be seen by them as a person who knew the ropes, who had a clear function in the world. To give up my lurking and wandering and dreaming and become the girl in the library.